Tools, Dials & unexpected Levers

Progress

There’s a funny dissonance I love to feel in movies : it’s when the modernity of a scenario, of dialogs, of directing is seen into what seems an “old form”.

It’s obvious – and very disturbing – when you watch Seven Samurai (1954) or Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The sound is old, and it’s black and white vintage, but everything sweats modernity.

It’s as if it was “not OK”, not fitting, and one wonders how the audience could watch that at the time. You feel this with all Welles movies, but also Fellini’s.

But in the beginning of the sixties, you find movies which are between two worlds : Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962), Huston’s Night of the Iguana (1964), Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), but also Lilith (1964) or Breathless (1960), Suddenly Last Summer (1959), The Misfits (1961), L’Eclisse (1962)…

All of them are black and white movies, and you begin to watch them accordingly (“Oh a good vintage classic movie!”). And you are FLOORED by the complexity or modernity of these…

Well, this article is about this “in between” mess. The structure seems to be : “looks like an old form, but modernity explodes into it”.

Where do you find that? In literature? Photography? Poetry?

What if you searched, out of Netflix, “Best films of the Sixties”, and watch them all, just for the pleasure of discovering forms, authors, resonances, happiness? Out of the flow…

No effects : “Do it on your cam” – Are you a photographer or a computer tinkerer?

Photography is a great hobby, and we all do it differently.

Digital and Big Giga SD cards allow us to take thousands of pictures. Then, for each, we can play a long time on our computer, pushing/pulling cursors for light, sharpness, special effects and filters. That’s fun!

In a way, I’m sure that we all realize one day or another that… it’s too much.

I heard many times about how photographers “invent” limits to reframe their Art. You have, as often, to invent some fruitful limits to climb into a higher level of… requirement.

Some go back to analogue, films. It’s expensive (you have to buy film rolls), therefore you really, suddenly, have to THINK before you trigger. It’s good to think about what we do!

What I chose to do is to know my cam enough to take the picture I want to get, without spending time to “fix” it on my Macintosh.

Thus, I often take the picture I want to get. I have to think about frames, grain, color, darkness and light, shadows. I don’t touch it, then. I sometimes reframe a bit, or add a little sharpness, that’s all. No filter, no color alteration, no RAW, etc…

I took these pictures today.

Voilà. The tool is yours : what will you… decrease, limit, in your Art-Too-Much? When you’re too rich on something, what do you stop, or choose 2%? What for? What would you win?

Valéry writes about what came, in literature, after Romanticism – example : Baudelaire after Hugo.

That’s this : Movement B comes after Movement A. It comes :

To distort it

To bring corrections to it

To bring contradictions to it

In the end, to stand in, to take his place

…what we are, what we can, what we want

Amounts of possibles?

Unexplored domains

Paths to trace

Fields to exploit

Cities to build

Relations to establish

Processes to spread

Can B bring exact responses to B? Is B a retaliation to A? Is this answer a energy source in order to gather? What are the desires in play? To be more solid, more clever, more… pure? What is the adolescence of newness? Why is it an advantage? Where are the imprudences, vulnerable spots, the impurities? Wisdom, move, perfection : when (after) do they come? What and where is the loss, when B crystallizes? How do audiences move around these?

Where do we see that? Between personalities? In Art only (fashion, architecture, etc)?

The second consequence of this progress is, as the machines become more and more powerful, men become more and more powerful, with almost God’s powers. Atomic bombs look like Zeus’ fury. Emailing a book in Japan takes one second. We use rockets to go to space, we fly in huge planes. It’s… titanesque! Titanic or Herculean, right? These words…

FIVE

The conclusion is in the RMS Titanic boat. Almost 900 feet long, so big and powerful that it was said unsinkable, right?

Jünger says that the Titanic disaster (1600 casualties) is an archetypal warning. The name of the ship, the arrogance of men, the power given by technology, the cut from “reality” and nature, is like a symbol of what happens to men who want to be Titans.

Art, Music, Painting, do what you want with these, but there’s something you can watch, a dial : Art is a progress.

One core of Art is : “What’s new here?”.

Thus, one path in music history – but not only – lead towards dissonance… Listen to Bach, then to Webern… Today it’s more complex, I agree…

One day I asked a friend : “How come a guy like Mozart never thought of wringing harmonies?”.

“Well, he DID!”, he answered.

The beginning of the Dissonance Quartet is a total shock when you discover it. It’s from the 18th Century and it sounds like Shostakovich! At least : first half of XXth Century.

I was like : “Wait what?”.

We could talk about this pattern for a few hours, right? Each important piece of Art swallows influences and digests them and builds something new, never seen, never heard. Think Picasso. Think Stravinsky!

But here it’s like a casual slapping in your face. Like an open window into 150 years in the future… with no consequence.